


hopeless changes over time

by ourlovelybones



Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types
Genre: Dorks in Love, Light Angst, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pre-The Death Cure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-07-27 14:23:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20047507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ourlovelybones/pseuds/ourlovelybones
Summary: “Thomas, are you out of mind?” Frypan asked. “Twelve people against WCKD? How are you going to take on all the trains with only twelve people?”When Thomas had grinned for the first time in almost two months, it finally hit Newt --“We don’t need to take on all the trains,” Thomas replied. “We just need the one with Minho and Aris and Sonya on it.”-- Newt knew he would follow this boy anywhere.[set before the death cure; some special moments between newt and thomas as they try to keep moving forward, instead of thinking about the past]





	hopeless changes over time

**Author's Note:**

> I was on the subway, listening to this song called "Mine Right Now" by Sigrid, and it's this super upbeat song that is so depressing. And then I had the nerve to listen to the acoustic version and it broke my hEART. And thus, this was born.
> 
> It's a bit experimental. I hope you all like it :) Thanks for indulging me one last time x
> 
> This is dedicated to my darling, Bre <3 Thank you for all the fics you’ve ever written for me, and to all the fics of yours I can’t wait to read. I can’t remember your username but I hope you find this, and I hope you love this. Love you immensely x

_and i ruin the moment, because i picture the end_

_but i don’t want to go there, so i tell myself that_

_hey, it’s alright if we don’t end up together_

_cause you’re mine right now_

_hey, it’s alright if we don’t get to forever_

_cause you’re mine right now_

_\- Sigrid x “Mine Right Now”_

He doesn’t think about her as much as he used to.

It used to keep him up at nights, the look on her face as she tried to explain why she did what she did. That evening in the twilight when the two of them were alone up on the cliff and without any sort of warning, the explosives from WCKD came raining down.

Newt didn't know any better how to comfort Thomas when the nightmares came. The other boy would toss and turn relentlessly in his sleep. Frypan snored on. But Newt never had much luck when it came to falling asleep, so he was always awake when Thomas would sit up with a jolt, panting heavily.

The first few nights, Newt laid still, watching him from the corner of his eye. It was always the same routine; Thomas would jolt awake, try to calm his breathing, realize it was futile and leave his cot, slinking out of the tent he shared with Newt and Frypan. Newt didn’t know where Thomas went, rolling onto his other side in hopes he would finally fall asleep.

But on the fifth night, he waited at least five minutes after Thomas had woken up and left their tent before doing the same. Frypan snored on, none the wiser. Newt envied him sometimes.

They had set up camp along a port. Thomas was sitting at the edge, on an abandoned crate that had been used to store apples and various other fruits. The moonlight glittered on the dark waves lapping at the shore.

Newt carefully walked towards him. The other boy’s shoulders were hunched, his hands covering his ears. Newt didn’t have to ask to find out what sounds he was so hopelessly trying to block out.

There wasn’t an extra crate beside Thomas so Newt slowly came up next to him and sat down on the wet wood, where the waves splashed over and drenched the pier when it was high tide.

“My first night in the Maze -” Newt had just begun to say when Thomas jumped, startled out of his mind. He hadn’t even noticed that Newt had come to sit.

“Newt? What are you doing here?”

“Following you,” Newt said plainly. No use in running around the truth as they sometimes did.

Thomas accepted his answer with a heavy sigh as he resumed hunching over himself. “Your first night in the Maze?”

“My first night in the Maze, I had nightmares too,” Newt told him. “I didn’t sleep a bloody wink that first week.”

Thomas didn’t respond. He watched the water rolling over and over, his chest rising and falling in the same pattern.

“Thanks to you, we’re no longer in that Maze,” Newt reminded him.

Thomas snorted. “You ever think maybe we’d be better off if I never tried to make us leave?”

“You can’t focus on all the ‘maybes,’ mate. You’ll drive yourself bloody insane. Maybe we never made it out of the Maze, and so what? We’re all stuck there with no more supplies of food, or clothing?”

“Maybe I never went into the Maze at all to kill that Griever and nobody ever died,” Thomas said. His voice was so soft, Newt had to strain to hear him over the water.

Newt shrugged. “Like I said, you’ll drive yourself crazy thinking about all of the possibilities. Maybe you should have seen it coming. But who’s to say you could have stopped it?”

That got him. Thomas had pursed his lips, noticeably tensing up. “I could have stopped it,” was all he said before getting up and turning back towards their tent.

Newt let him walk away and stayed by the water until the sun rose. He still didn’t have his memories from before the Maze. He didn’t remember what pretty sunrises by the water looked like, how breathtaking the shades of yellow, pink, and orange looked when mixed together like watercolors. Newt hoped that wherever he was, Minho had a window looking out. The things they always talked about late at night in the Maze were windows. Newt couldn’t think of a thing he wished for more as he rose from his horror-filled dreams than a window looking out into the world and seeing something as beautiful as the sun rising over the water, wherever such a dream like that could be.

Thomas apologized to him after breakfast, for getting up and leaving so abruptly in their conversation. He walked with Newt to the tent where Vince had set up a base with radios -- where they’d been trying to tap into WCKD communications -- making meaningless conversation.

_Oh the sky looks nice today._

_It does, doesn’t it?_

Boring stuff, like that.

The next night when Thomas jolted awake, he didn’t immediately follow his routine. He had looked over to the other side of the tent, where Newt was deep in REM sleep, exhausted from having gone nearly two days without a wink of shut-eye. He checked to make sure Frypan was sleeping and snoring, too. Then he slipped out of his cot and back outside.

The next time Newt followed Thomas out of the tent was in the middle of the week when the break-through they thought they had made in hacking into WCKD’s communications, ultimately proved to be useless. Thomas was more antsy than ever, stressed that the more time that passed, the less chances Minho had against WCKD.

Harriet was frustrated, as well. She always sat criss-crossed on the table, pouring over maps with Brenda. Thomas’s anxiety-ridden energy had traveled to her and she’d snapped at him. He’d snapped at her back. Brenda tried to calm the two of them, but neither of them were in the mood for being pleasant.

When Brenda had started to breathe through her nose in efforts to calm _herself_ down, Frypan and Jorge tried to distract all of them, but Newt already knew it was futile. The only thing that could make everything all right was if Minho, Sonya, and Aris were back on base with them. Safe and secured, far away from WCKD and _her _clutches.

No one spoke at dinner, the first time there had ever been a silent meal. Thomas immediately went to the tent after.

Newt followed him out to the pier that night, where he found the other boy sitting on the only crate once again. Thomas heard him approaching this time.

“I’ll apologize to Harriet in the morning,” he said a bit gruffly. “And Brenda. It wasn’t right of me to lose my temper like that.”

“You don’t always have to be the leader, you know,” Newt said as he sat down beside him, again on the wet wood. Eva, one of the girls from Group B who was in charge of the laundry, would roll her eyes at the consistent wet spot on the back of his trousers. “It's just me right now. You’re allowed to have feelings.”

Thomas snorted. “And what about you, Newt?”

“What about me?”

Thomas shrugged, looking up at the moon. “What are your feelings?”

It was a heavy question, but these were heavy nights. “I miss him,” Newt said honestly, playing with a loose thread at the end of his trousers. “I miss all of them.”

Thomas nodded. “Every time I let myself miss him, I feel like I’m failing him. I made a promise to him, Newt. When we were in that abandoned mall, I promised I’d never let him go back to WCKD.”

Newt could tell there was something else he was holding back. But Thomas was never one to be poked and prodded with a stick for information. If anything, it only made him retreat into his shell more.

It wasn’t until a night nearly two weeks later, when he finally figured it out. When they all had finally figured out a way to track WCKD’s incoming and outgoing communication signals undetected. Thomas and Harriet had lit up with glee when they heard the familiar voice of the Rat-Man, as they’d all taken to calling him now, shouting orders at one of the bergs going west of the Scorch. Their previous argument long forgotten, they’d turned to each other and hugged causing everyone to cheer and clap.

That night at dinner, Frypan had concocted a special brew Newt hadn’t tasted since his time in the Maze. While Frypan didn’t pretend to take ownership of it, Newt and Thomas knew who had inspired him to make it. They didn’t say anything about it, though. Just tipped their heads back and let the God-awful liquid pour down their throats.

Everyone felt light and fuzzy as they went to bed, but Thomas still woke up with a jolt and Newt still couldn’t fall asleep. However, this time when he followed Thomas out to the pier, there was a second crate right beside him.

Newt smiled for the first time in days it felt like as he sat down graciously. “How’d you know I come?”

“I guess I just hoped you would.”

The brew was still in their system, coursing through their blood. Their conversation was light and easy at first.

_Brenda’s hair has gotten a bit longer._

_I wonder if she’ll style it differently._

_I like how Harriet’s hair looks._

_It looks nice, doesn’t it?_

Then the question slipped out of his mouth before he even had time to process it himself, to think over his words and then realize he shouldn’t say them. “Do you think we’re going to find him?”

Thomas raised his eyebrow. “Yeah. We have to.”

“No, but do you think we’re going to find him or find his body?” Newt asked again.

Thomas tensed, his lips pursed. His fingers tapped rapidly on his knee. “She’s not going to kill him.”

It was the first time they’d ever referenced _she_ out loud.

“You seem confident about this,” Newt noticed. The brew made his brain light and fuzzy. He hoped that Frypan would make it more often.

Thomas snorted, a dark sound coming from such a light boy. “Because I know how she thinks. She’s not going to kill him when she can still use him against me.”

Newt sometimes forgot that before there was a Maze, there was a Thomas and a Teresa. The best of friends and the brightest of them all. They were WCKD’s favorite toys, their brains always picked at by the scientists and doctors. At least, that was what he had pieced together from Alby’s decaying brain and what that Doctor Mary had said right before Janson killed her.

And as much as he didn’t care for her anymore these days, Newt still had trouble believing Teresa could be so diabolical. Somehow he believed her when she pleaded with them all that night, that she truly thought she was doing the right thing. He saw the horrified look on her face when Janson killed Mary. The way her lip quivered when Minho, he, and Frypan all stood behind Thomas who held an explosive in his hands, all of them ready to die together.

He remembered that night in the Scorch after Winston had killed himself, how she could barely stand to look at any of them. At the time, he brushed it off as survivor’s guilt, something they all struggled with. But now he knew better, that she had known all of that time that there was a cure that could have saved Winston — and they had been running away from it.

“Look Tommy,” Newt had sighed. “As much as I don’t like her either, I can’t believe she’d be that cruel. You really think she has that much power over the rest of them, anyways?”

Thomas scrunched his face. “Do I really think she has that much power? Newt, you saw the lengths they went through to protect her. She had her own freaking berg.”

This time, Newt scrunched his face.

“And she’s been behind all of this since the beginning,” Thomas continued, his brows furring in confusion even more. “Ava Paige is the reason why we were all in the Maze. She tortured us for years. How could you think she doesn’t have the power, or the cruelty, to keep Minho alive as her pawn?”

They’d clearly been thinking of two very different _she’s_.

“I thought you meant Teresa,” Newt said in a low voice.

Thomas tensed even more. For the first time in almost a month, Newt couldn’t read his expression. Not because Newt didn’t know every single one of Thomas’s quirks and mannerisms by this point, but because Thomas had gone so still and so quiet, his face went entirely blank.

For a long time, the only sounds that could be heard from the pier were the sounds of the waves rising with the moon in front of them. The camp they had found and hidden out in was so bare and desolate, that they hadn’t even seen signs of birds or any other wildlife for weeks. It was the perfect place to hide from WCKD, who had sent bergs after the Right Arm Resistance the minute they woke up that next morning after kidnapping all of those innocent kids.

Newt was ready to change the subject, or get up and head back to the tent for some sleep, when Thomas finally exhaled a deep breath through his nose. “I can’t afford to think about her.”

“What do you mean?”

“Because I could have stopped it. I should have seen it coming,” Thomas said. He looked straight ahead, as he always did when speaking to Newt at night. “I could tell something was bothering her. Ever since we left WCKD’s headquarters, she’d been acting strange. She even told me she thought we should go back.”

Newt frowned. “What? When?”

“Before … before Winston died,” Thomas stammered on the last words. He turned his attention back to his hands and cracked his knuckles. “She said, 'everything was fine before you -‘ and then never finished her sentence. I should have seen it coming.”

Newt was quiet for a moment. He was mulling over his words on what to say next, thinking through the brew that was slowing down his brain. Thomas took that as a cue to continue, however.

“So I can’t think about her. I don’t. She made her choice. And I’ve made mine.”

Thomas’s choice was to kill Ava Paige. The problem was that he needed a plan.

And it took an agonizing six months to come up with said plan. Every time they got closer and closer to trying to pinpoint a location where the kids were being held, they experienced a setback. Brenda and Jorge had driven out to the edges of the Scorch, but found nothing. Harriet had heard something about trains during one of her shifts on listening to the radio and had been searching for train routes on her map, but found nothing. Frypan, Vince, Newt, and Thomas had all been arguing about when it was time to move to the Safe Haven, but came up with no decision.

One night when all three of them couldn’t sleep in their tent, they kept their lantern on as they laid in their hammocks.

“All we know is WCKD keeps moving the kids,” Newt said. “We don’t bloody know where. We don’t bloody know when.”

“We know how, at least,” Frypan offered helpfully. “The trains.”

“The trains,” Newt repeated. “So we need to figure out _when _they start moving the kids and to _where_ they’re going.”

“But say we do figure it out — how are we going to stop the train and rescue Minho? We’d need a whole army,” Frypan pointed out.

Newt frowned. He hadn’t thought that far ahead.

“We don’t need an army,” Thomas said, breaking the long silence. “Just a few of us. Only people we absolutely trust.”

He sat up in his cot and Newt could see the wild look in his brown eyes as he thought. It made his stomach churn — whether with nerves, or _excitement_, he had yet to find out.

Frypan, however, looked nervously at Newt. “What do you mean … a _few_ of us?”

“Us, Vince, Jorge, Brenda, Harriet,” Thomas counted off his fingers. “Seven so far, which isn’t ideal but we’ll make it work. We all have to be there. But definitely no more than twelve.”

Even Newt was starting to wonder if the root of Vince’s claims that Thomas needed to take a step back from this rescue mission were beginning to become a little more _understandable_.

“Thomas, are you out of mind?” Frypan asked. “Twelve people against WCKD? How are you going to take on all the trains with only twelve people?”

When Thomas had grinned for the first time in almost two months, it finally hit Newt --

“We don’t need to take on all the trains,” Thomas replied. “We just need the one with Minho and Aris and Sonya on it.”

\-- Newt knew he would follow this boy anywhere.

I.

He doesn’t think about her as much as he used to because he doesn’t have time to.

Ever since the seeds of a rescue plan had been planted in Thomas’s mind, everyone had been working overtime. The plan was crazy. Thomas didn’t want to stop WCKD with an army — he wanted to corner them with a trap.

“It’s dangerous. We’re depending all on chance here — _if _the trains are carrying Minho, Aris, and Sonya, _if _they do have a berg tailing them, _if _we all don’t get shot and then blow up the entire mission before it has a chance to get started,” Jorge pointed out when Thomas explained his idea, as they all crowded around in the tent Vince had dedicated for rescue mission planning. But then he grinned devilishly. “It just might be crazy enough to work.”

Vince looked at him in horror. “You agree with this?”

“I didn’t say I agree. I said it _might_ be crazy enough to work, but to pull off a trap this complex, we don’t have room for might or maybe. It needs to be a perfect plan.”

“We need to lure the berg away from the trains,” Harriet said. “Far enough away to give a group time to stop the trains, but close enough that we could make it back in time.”

Brenda counted off her fingers. “That’s at least six people. Two people to lure the berg away from the trains, three people to wait in hiding, and one person to take over the berg.”

Vince shook his head. “How the hell are six people going to take over an entire berg? Don’t forget the berg can shoot from the sky and unless there’s something you’re all not telling me, we can’t do that.”

Thomas turned to Brenda and Jorge. “You two know the Scorch better than anyone.” He grinned as he looked specifically at Jorge. “And you’re also a hell of a driver.”

Jorge raised his eyebrow, an almost amused gleam in his eye. “Flattery just might get you somewhere, hermano.”

“You need to distract the berg from us, coming from the other side of the trains,” Thomas thought aloud. Newt found himself staring at him biting his lip, his brows furred as he thought. “Drive it away so you can give us time to come up. We can set an explosive device to cut off the trains in the middle.”

“Don’t drool,” Frypan whispered under his breath, nudging Newt in the side. The blond cleared his throat, hoping he didn't look too flushed.

“And then we come back with the berg once we’ve taken it over,” Brenda said. She looked around at all of them, thankfully not noticing Newt’s distracted state, and smirked. “It’s fucking crazy. We could all die. Or worse — be taken by WCKD.”

“We could also get our friends back,” Thomas said looking directly at Harriet. “It’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

Harriet thought for a moment. She sighed and then shrugged, a small smile creeping on her lips. “I could still use some revenge. But I’m going to be alive to see it through, so we need to make sure that this plan is perfect. No room for mistakes.”

“No room for mistakes,” Thomas agreed. He turned to Vince, but only Newt noticed one of his hands twitching behind his back. “Are you in?”

Vince sighed even more deeply than Harriet, rubbing at his eyes. “Thomas, I want to save as many kids as we can. So if I, for one minute, feel this plan will endanger them, then I’m going to call it off. But … for now. For now, if we can make it work, this just might be our best shot.”

They needed resources and materials to pull the plan off, and they needed all the limited time they could get. For the next three months, everything depended on being at the _exact_ right place at the _exact_ right time. No one slept very much. No one ate very much, either.

The rest of the world around them, the kids who had escaped and the adults who had helped Vince and Mary keep the Right Arm Resistance strong and running, were privy to nothing. Thomas couldn’t risk any chances — the only people who _had_ to know, knew.

“I can’t get all of their hopes up for nothing,” Thomas admitted to Newt one night by the pier. Earlier that day, they’d managed to get their hands on some ropes and hooks, but no one was sure enough that these ropes were strong enough to connect an entire train car full of kids to a flying berg.

“What if it doesn’t work?” Thomas confided. Only in the dark, under the moonlight on the pier with Newt, did Thomas ever let his guard down for a fraction. Newt was always content to just listen, and sometimes stare at him.

“Three months ago, we were hopeless and now look at where we are now. Because of you,” Newt said. He even dared to poke at Thomas’s knee for emphasis. “If you hadn’t thought of trapping a bloody _berg_, we’d all be still listening to their radio signals, trying to figure out how to stop a train. Tommy, you have to believe it’ll work. Because if you don’t, then none of us stand a chance at saving Minho.”

Thomas sighed. “I never wanted this.”

“What?”

“To be anyone’s leader. I just wanted to save my friends.”

“You don’t always have to be the leader,” Newt reminded him. “But you are the most hopeful one of us all. If you don’t have any hope, then it’s up to the rest of us to remind you that we’re only here because of you. We’re not in the Maze anymore. We’re out of the Scorch, for the most part. And we’re going to save Minho. Because of you.”

Even in the dark, Newt could see Thomas’s cheeks flush a little. His own heart swelled at the sight.

“It’s a team effort,” Thomas said.

“A team that believes in you.”

“Give yourself some credit,” Thomas said lightly, bumping their shoulders. “Without you, I’m sure we’d all be dead by now.”

Newt shrugged. Their shoulders were still pressed together, but he didn’t move a single inch away even as he thought back to a moment not very long ago, barely six months ago, to when he handed one of his closest friends a gun to end the pain. He never quite forgot the absolutely devastated look on Frypan’s face as he said goodbye to Winston for the last time. “That’s subjective.”

Thomas always seemed to be able to read his mind. “If he turned, we’d all be dead. It’s my fault. Minho and I should have never lingered around that basement for that long.”

Newt felt selfish, but he didn’t want to play the blame game with Thomas all night long. He missed Winston, as he missed Chuck. Alby. Ben. Sometimes even that shank, Gally, before the Maze had ruined his mind.

But the more time he focused on how much he missed them, the more he felt like he was failing them. He was finally starting to understand why Thomas spent so much time moving and moving and moving.

“Do you really think there’s a Safe Haven out there?”

Thomas looked at him briefly. “I hope there is. That’s the only way all of this was ever worth it.”

“If we make it to there then, that’s when we’re allowed to miss them,” Newt decided. He looked back at Thomas, close enough to count all the little moles on his skin. “But for now, we keep bloody moving. We rescue Minho, Aris, and Sonya. Then we can worry about getting to the Safe Haven. And _then_ we can think about them again.”

Thomas nodded. “Okay.”

“We will make it there.”

“Yeah. We will make it there. For them.”

“For them.”

II.

That was the only time Newt had ever lied to Thomas.

Somehow, he knew he was never going to make it to the Safe Haven.

He feels the changes emotionally, long before they ever began to physically manifest. His brain gets cloudier. He starts processing things .45 seconds later than everyone else does. He gets winded more easily than he used to, even though his limp always prevented him from having to run.

But he never tells Thomas this because Thomas worries too much. He worries about Brenda and her bite from the crank, that somehow healed without any reasonable explanation. He worries about Frypan getting enough to eat at mealtimes and if it gets too warm in the kitchen quarters when he’s cooking. He worries that one person will miss their cue during the plan they’re supposed to execute in three weeks, and everything will be ruined.

Newt knows he should admit that he might not be the best person to bring on board for this mission. It’d be the right thing to do rather than throw everybody off because he’s .45 seconds behind all of them. But he knows he needs to be there when they rescue Minho, so he focuses on getting through this. If he could survive a fall in the Maze, then he could survive this.

Just until they rescue Minho.

And even though he still doesn’t smile very often, Newt knows that Thomas is feeling hopeful about their plan. Brenda improvised an idea during one of their meetings earlier that she should shoot at one of the train conductors in the front to get the berg on her and Jorge’s tail. Vince hadn’t shot the idea down. In fact, he seemed to even like it. And the more hopeful Thomas feels, the more hopeful Newt becomes that he can survive this.

So instead of waking up in the middle of the night these days, Thomas wakes up earlier in the morning. He’s taken to gently nudging Newt awake — if on the rare chance, he’s sleeping — so they can watch the sun rise over the pier.

Newt thinks he’s dreaming, sometimes. He worries that one day he’ll truly wake up, back in the Maze, and this will all have been a dream. He thinks he’s dreaming as they watch the horizon form a pink and orange line, the light crystal waves rolling and rolling back to the shore. It’s hypnotizing as a bright, white dot starts to rise from the depths of the ocean before them. A halo forms around it, golden orange and yellow and red. The sky stretches its colors out, like its raising its arms, and when the arms begin to fall back to its side, a ball of pure white and yellow surrounded by a pale pink glow dances into the sky.

He used to wish for mornings like these in the Maze, hoping one day to wake up wherever such a dream like this would be.

He nearly swoons, sitting on his crate, as he says, “The sky looks nice today, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Thomas says almost shyly. “You do, too.”

Newt nearly blinks, in an attempt to wake himself up from this fever-fueled dream. But even if it isn’t real, he doesn’t want it to stop.

And it doesn’t stop. Not for a while, anyways. In the mornings, Thomas gently nudges Newt awake to go down to the pier and watch the sun rise together. Thomas says something shyly that makes Newt blush like a little girl. They walk close enough together that their fingers brush together as they walk to the Meal Area, and wait for Frypan to come sit with them after he’s finished serving the rest of the Resistance food. Then they go to the Rescue Mission Tent, as they’ve begun to call it, and run over their plan thoroughly for hours as someone listens closely to the radios, to make sure their information is still accurate.

One morning, a couple weeks before they’re set to put Thomas’s insanely dangerous and crazy plan in motion, Newt tricks himself into thinking his brain is back to normal. When Thomas flirts with him, he finally flirts back.

“Well you’re brave, for starters,” Thomas had been saying. They were discussing whether or not Newt should be in charge of the team disconnecting the train from the track. “You have all the qualities someone would need to be in charge of that part. It helps that you’re cute, too.”

“But then we’ll probably just distract each other while we’re supposed to be doing our jobs,” Newt says instead of blushing like a tomato. “I mean, I might as well wear Vince’s pair of ridiculously thick goggles so you don’t end up getting a boner.”

Thomas bursts out laughing, so hard that he has to clutch his sides and nearly falls off the crate. Newt tries to keep from smiling, but it’d been so long since either of them laughed so hard that tears sprang to their eyes. Every day was a new constant anxiety — what if Jorge’s car ran out of gas? What if the ropes snapped in half while they were trying to transport the train? Did all of the walkie-communicators have batteries? — that to laugh felt like a crime these days. But watching Thomas laugh so hard he _snorted_, instead of the glorious sun rise, was the one good thing that Newt finally allowed himself these past five and a half months.

Thomas wiped them away as he tried to calm himself down. “I can’t believe you said that.”

“I can’t believe you snorted!”

“I’m going to make you wear those,” Thomas promises between chuckles.

“Oh yeah? How?”

Thomas had either unconsciously or consciously just — Newt could never know with the little bastard — licked his lips, and was now raising his eyebrow. “You’ll see.”

They accidentally ended up staying at the pier longer than they normally did, running back to the Meal Area just as Frypan sits down at their usual bench with a suspicious look on his face.

“Oh that looks good,” Thomas says as they both sit down. He reaches over to try one of Frypan’s pieces of bacon, but Frypan smacks his hand away.

“Nah, nah, nah get your own, you fool,” he says as he eats the piece of bacon, although he grins and shakes his head to himself as his two friends get back up and in line for some food.

That day, as they run through the back-up plan for the back-up plan for a fifth time, Thomas turns to Vince. “Do you still have those goggles you got from that raid last month?”

The little bastard did that on purpose. Newt had been in the middle of drinking water when Thomas asked and spits the water out, accidentally spraying it all over the table. He’s earned some disgusted and strange looks from around the table.

Vince shakes his head, moving on from that. “Uh, yeah. Why?”

“Newt’s going to need them when he’s torching the locks,” Thomas says innocently, even though the devious twinkle in his eye says otherwise.

Vince looks between the two of them before shaking his head again, deciding it’s not a battle worth fighting right now. “Yeah, you can have ‘em, Newt. Alright, let’s run back-up plan B again, from the top. Jorge, you have to remember we’re not “punching the bastards in the face” — we don’t have time for that, unfortunately.”

III.

She hasn’t come into their conversations in months, by the time Rescue Mission Alpha is about to get rolling. They have five days before they’re supposed to intercept the train, steal a berg, kidnap Minho, Aris, Sonya, and a bunch of other kids that WCKD kidnapped first who are stuck on a train, and make it back to their base without getting discovered.

Safe to say, everyone’s a little on edge.

Thomas was never one to be considered _chatty_, but he becomes nearly mute as the day approaches. Instead, he speaks more with his actions. When he’s frustrated, he purses his lips and tenses his shoulders. When he’s amused by something someone says, he lets out a tiny snort through his nose and then asks that they run back-up plan C again from the top. When he’s amused by something _Newt_ does, he brushes their fingers together.

That morning, they sit on their crates at the pier per usual, but for once, their crates are pressed together. They sit shoulder to shoulder, side by side, in front of the water.

“It doesn’t hurt all the time, but I find that rolling it back and forth every night a couple times, dulls the pain when I wake up in the morning,” Newt says mindlessly. The only time they talk — mainly Newt, since Thomas is often too stressed to talk, but content to just listen — about something other than Rescue Mission Alpha (or it’s five back-up plans) is during sunrise. Newt considers this _their_ time, something that should tangibly belong to him and Thomas.

Thomas’s fingers had been playing with Newt’s fingers, his way of saying _thank you for being my friend, _when his actions still. He frowns as he looks at Newt’s injured leg. “Your leg.”

“Yeah,” Newt says with a sigh. “It’s mine.”

“No, no, no you have a limp,” Thomas’s frown deepens, causing Newt to frown in return. “Are you sure you can handle hiding in the bushes for that long and then running to the trains?”

“Tommy, we ran through a bloody Maze together. I’ll be fine.”

But Thomas doesn’t look like he’s ready to let the matter go. He bites his lip as he stares at Newt’s ankle. “Newt, this whole plan — all of them — depend on being at the right place at the right moment. Maybe we should have Brenda in your position, and you in the car with Jorge.”

“Brenda works better with Jorge,” Newt says in a rather clipped tone. _And you work better with me._

“Yeah, but -“

“Tommy, I wouldn’t want to put Minho in any danger. You know this,” Newt says. It’s not a lie, really. He really doesn’t want to put Minho in danger, but he _needs_ to be there when they rescue him. And even if his brain is a little foggier than it’s supposed to be, even if his lungs don’t work as well as Thomas’s, he knows that if he can survive a Maze, he can survive whatever this is.

Thomas finally nods and puts his hand gently over Newt’s. “I never meant to imply that you would. I’m sorry. I’m just a bit stressed.”

Newt finally locks their fingers together, and for the first time in a long time, he feels steady. Stronger. He smiles at Thomas lightly. “We’re going to get him back.”

“It’s going to work,” Thomas says and squeezes Newt’s hand. “We’re going to make it to the Safe Haven, with Minho.”

Trepidation fills Newt’s stomach, but he exhales through his nose and keeps the smile on his face.

“Can you imagine it? Paradise,” Thomas says with a heavenly sigh. “I think Paradise would be mornings like this, but forever.”

A knot has formed at the bottom of Newt’s throat. He knows that this is his Paradise, that nothing can ever come close to this — holding hands with a beautiful boy as the sun rises above him, casting a golden glow over his face. His only hope now is that Minho will feel this euphoria he’s been privileged to experience.

He leans his head on Thomas’s shoulder, even though they should be getting ready to stand up and head to the Meal Area so Frypan doesn’t get suspicious again. “Yeah. Forever sounds nice.”

**Author's Note:**

> (HEY! It's alright if we don't get to forever! Cause you're mine right now!)
> 
> I hope you all like it! I spent my entire four hour bus ride writing this, and I really really like the way it came out. I've been feeling a lot more nervous about my writing lately, but I hope you all enjoyed it. Even if you didn't, thanks for reading :)


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